Journal of the Korean Society of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineers ISSN:2288-0291(Print) 2288-2790(Online) 한국자원공학회지

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of underground research laboratory (URL) in the siting selection in France. Based on a failure of site selection in the 1980s, France enacted the legislation in 1991 and promoted the implementation of siting process project as a government initiative. The project to site selection for deep geological repository (DGR) is determined by the verification of feasibility study based on the results of 15 years of R&D activities through URL. URL provided scientific information to site-specific geological data at -490 m considering the construction depth of DGR and the interaction process between natural barriers and engineered barriers. Thus, valuable scientific informations derived from URL activities were contributed to improve the reliability for the integrated safety analysis report and played a important role to constitute of the safety case of DGR.